My first vegan cupcake. Hmm.
When it comes to baking, I prefer to stick with the usual staples: butter, eggs, sugar, flour. I don’t cook gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, etc. In the past, I’ve happily sat sipping a glass of wine while friends concocted cookies with birch sugar, gluten-free flour, etc. If you want to do it, by all means, please do. But those ingredients aren’t coming near my kitchen.
However…there are exceptions.
And, in this case, the exception was my roommate’s birthday. Today she celebrates an important birthday and since she’s lactose intolerant, I thought some friends of mine and I could whip her up some vegan cupcakes so she could enjoy them. And, considering I don’t like chocolate cake (I know, I’m a weirdo), I don’t have to eat them. Win-win!
Two of my girl friends came over and we started the process of baking – which of course involved wine, cheese, bread, salami and other delicious ingredients that offset the vegan-ness of the cupcakes. I had planned on making a fig galette, but had ran out of time before they arrived to make it happen. The night was a lot of fun and got very messy at moments, especially when we were scooping the batter into the pastry bags to fill the tins.
I will say this, however, cooking with wine may be fine but baking with wine can lead to disaster. The other cupcakes we attempted – cardamom ones – were a disaster courtesy of me misreading the recipe and adding 1.5 sticks of butter vs .5 sticks of butter.
However, the chocolate amaretto cupcakes turned out way better than I had expected. In place of butter we used earth balance, in place of eggs there was canola oil, and in place of heavy cream was soy creamer. We also added almond flour to the mix, though I’m not sure what role that played. Granted, as vegan baking is definitely new for me – this was the first time I had ever tried it – I decided to follow this recipe from Love and Olive Oil precisely, but according to my roommate, they taste great! Score!
Photo credit: With the exception of the ingredients and the final cupcake shots, all photos were taken by the lovely Maux Gitto.